


An Empty Flat under a Silent Night

by eggbenedict



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: I'm so sorry, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Post-Reichenbach, Sherlock is a Mess, angst like woah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 01:16:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggbenedict/pseuds/eggbenedict
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been 2 years since he last talked to John, and Sherlock decides it's time to come home. However, it all comes off as a surprise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Empty Flat under a Silent Night

**Author's Note:**

> Art cover made by simplelein(.)tumblr

 

When Sherlock returned to 221B Baker Street, it was during Christmas Eve.

He had had difficulties to take a vacant taxi, as most people were busy with Christmas business and the London streets were drowned in masses and masses of citizens. While he was waiting alone beneath the cold air of the night, he looked down at his phone. He had received two phone calls so far:  one from Mycroft and another one from Molly.

Mycroft had asked him to stay away from London until the period of two weeks. “For yours and John’s safety.” He had said. It hadn’t been difficult to book a plane ticket from the Netherlands to Heathrow Airport before the 25th this month, but listening to his brother’s complaints was another kind of story. In the other hand, Molly’s ad had been warmer. She had suggested him to have dinner with her at her apartment.

Sherlock, however, keenly refused Molly’s invitation. During the taxi ride, flower bouquet in his hand, he felt nervous.

“Are these for your girlfriend?” The taxi driver asked him.  Sherlock knew that was none of the man’s business, but he couldn’t avoid a snug smile.

“Yes.” He replied.

 

The taxi stopped, and Sherlock took himself a moment to look at 221B. Nothing hadn’t changed; it was just like the way he left it. _Home_. Yes, that was what it was.

He paid the cabbie and was surprised when the door slid open without the use of a key, as if someone had just walked in before him. He called for mrs Hudson, he called for John, but none replied back. It was bizarre.

He ran upstairs, pressing the flower bouquet onto the left side of his chest, and another shocking surprise came when he found the flat door slightly open. Someone was there, or someone had left a few minutes ago. Sherlock stood, silently judging by the sight of it.

The carpet was folded, as if feet had stepped right onto it. There was dust, and an odd smell coming from the kitchen. Sherlock identified the odor of rotten fish and woman’s perfume. Expensive brand, sort of. He grimaced. Sherlock last remembered how the flat smelled before he faked his death: it was the smell of chemicals, wood and John’s casual scent: wool and cheap shampoo, and something else he didn’t quite remembered now, as the dirty smell from the kitchen blunted his mind. Sherlock walked around the empty flat, searching for an invisible clue to the only thing that mattered: finding vital signs.

The skull and his violin were missing. But what caught Sherlock’s attention was John’s laptop above the table. The screen was black, out of battery. Sherlock decided there would be time to go for the charger.

He focused on the kitchen. Sherlock stepped in.

Everything seemed into place, despite tens of boxes placed onto the table. Sherlock realized they were flooded with his personal items, but some of the boxes were still empty. The microscope, his phone, even his case archives were there. And then there was the skull, carefully wrapped in old newspapers, and his violin case, untouchable. Apparently someone had started to pack all his belongings. Sherlock thought if there was a possibility it could have been his brother. It would have been the appropriate. But these boxes… There was something wrong about them. There was still too much to pack, he noticed, but that wasn’t everything he observed. Sherlock’s fingers traced the cracks of the carton boxes, deducing how long had passed since someone had put them there, onto the kitchen table. Sherlock imagined months.

Then there was the sink, flooded with rotten fish, here the smell. Sherlock pinched his nose when he breathed in. It was nauseating, disgusting and it sickened him. Hours ago someone had decided to cook some fish but ended up to the pub instead, Sherlock imagined, bitterly. The detective wondered who on earth would have been so absentminded as to leave a bunch of fish inside the kitchen sink. An inner part of him, a part he couldn’t dare to possess, wondered if something had happened to John while he was preparing dinner. Sherlock pressed the flower bouquet closer to himself.

He ignored the fish and focused on the smell of woman’s perfume.

“Heaven’s sake, did mrs Hudson win the lottery?” Sherlock snorted, since nobody in the flat but him could allow buying such an expensive cologne,  although 2 years can change a lot of things. Sherlock imagined John winning the lottery and running away with a blondie in some lost island.

“Is that what people do then? Running away with girlfriends?” Sherlock bitterly muttered in the dark.

The man with black, curly hair left the kitchen and ran upstairs to John’s bedroom, flower bouquet still with him. It didn’t take him a lot of effort to find the charger for John’s laptop. He always placed it in the same drawer. However, the woman’s perfume was somehow stronger in the room. Sherlock had never got used to the smell of female cologne. It suffocated him.

His eyes found John’s purse. Sherlock frowned; there was no money inside.

Strange. John always used to save his money, unless…

Sherlock returned to the living room, and connected John’s laptop to the charger. As always, he didn’t have trouble to guess the password, and as soon as the desktop screen appeared, he noticed the emails tab was still open. Sherlock’s curiosity won. There was an email from mrs Hudson from Edinburgh (so she was on a holiday?), another one from Mycroft, five from Molly, two from Lestrade, another one from Mike Stamford, and six from his sister, Harriet. But to Sherlock’s surprise, ten emails were from a woman called Sophie.

Sherlock checked them out.

His gut constricted.

They were _death threats._

The bathroom door was latched, and there was no way to open it unless someone used an ax to break the wooden material. Sherlock went to the kitchen and searched for something tough and sharper enough as to break down a door. He found a heavy knife in one of the drawers. Sherlock sighed. It was not the best option but he needed to hurry up. The dark haired man positioned himself before the door, and placed the flower bouquet onto the floor. With a huge strength, he repeatedly stabbed the knife against the lock, hoping to bring down the door as soon as possible, his heart racing fast. Sherlock didn’t stop, despite his forehead was damp with sweat.

After a few tries, the door cracked open. Sherlock grabbed the flowers and walked in.

The bathroom was empty despite a pair of slippers on the floor, which Sherlock deduced they were John’s. The bathtub was covered with its curtains, and Sherlock could hear the weak sound of water splashing. He moved closer, a sensation in his chest he could not identify.

Sherlock carefully withdrew the curtains.

His knees failed.

In the tub, John was looking at him with wide eyes, a mischievous smile in his lips, while the water shook his body gently, coddling him like a sea mother mollycoddling his son. His face was soft and yellowish. Sherlock didn’t need a huge effort to deduce that he was dead.

And yet, Sherlock never wanted to be so wrong in his life.

The flower bouquet hit the floor, and Sherlock’s knees were next. Whatever had been wrong within the two, it no longer could be fixed.

A shaking hand reached for John’s wrist, hidden under the water. Sherlock couldn’t suppress a shudder when his fingers connoted how cold John’s skin was in contrast to the water. Not many hours had passed since this lost, and Sherlock almost blamed himself for being so late.

He definitely was. John once had told him so.

“J-Joh-.” Sherlock didn’t recognize his own voice, and obliged to clear his throat to recover what little was left of his coolness, bracing what was going to soon fall into pieces. “John.”

_John._

It felt like a stab to the guts. Sherlock’s mind moved with the speed of a racing kart, swimming through a river of images and flashbacks that once were achieved, and being currently reborn with the impact of the now, emerging from layers and layers of composure and coldness, buried for months, appearing in the blinding light of the truth, a truth that Sherlock had kept in his heart right before falling from the rooftop. He had told John all these things, and they had believed them. He hoped he never had. He hoped he had stuck with him until the end.

Once more, Sherlock had been wrong.

He was holding John now, not with the strength of a truck, and he frowned when his hands closed around John’s soaked woolen jumper.  He was wearing that hideous jumper he had hated so much. Sherlock wanted to laugh, but instead his throat made a croaked sound. Sherlock felt something into the pit of his chest that was familiar. Images of the investigation of the case of the mysterious hound resurfaced, and Sherlock acknowledged the feeling. It wasn’t anger, or sadness what was consuming him. Sherlock was alienated to that.

It was _confusion_.

What was happening? Why had John taken his own life? Is that what he felt when he –

Oh.

“You humans are so easy.” Sherlock stated, calmly. “You want to believe you hold control of everything but deep beneath you’re all so beaten and massacred, always losing the battle. It’s so predictable, so… weak.” Sherlock swallowed and looked alarmingly at John’s right cheek. He didn’t remember deciding to stroke it with his thumb.

However, there were more important things than worrying about his actions betraying him, or, for example, how soaked his Belstaff coat was.

He carefully pressed the lifeless man against him, and suppressed the lump in his throat. He looked at John; he analyzed the smoothness of his face, the tiny wrinkles on his forehead, his hoary blonde hair, his thin lips, his chin, his pale eyes, and Sherlock couldn’t look away anymore.

“This is so alien to me, John. I come home during Christmas Eve, expecting to see you again, and instead I find you inside a tub. Is this the gift you wanted to give me? Last year you gave me an ugly sweater with huge snowflakes falling to a reindeer’s head. I’ve only worn it once and because you forced me to. But no gift would have been better than that.”

“I know how faithful you are about your actions, and I know you well, John. And I know that you wouldn’t just do something like _this_ because some woman stole your money and threatened to kill you. But _this_ , John, _THIS_ is not what I would have wanted. This is not what I planned to come into. And I must congratulate you, because for the first time since I have use of a brain, I don’t know what to do. I need you to teach me what it is like mourning someone because all I know is that I’m crumbling and there’s no one left to hold me.”

“I’ve been chasing criminals around the world for 2 years, John. Mycroft didn’t want me to come here today. But I had to. I know it’s selfish, in fact I _am_ selfish, and I wanted to see you again, to spend Christmas with you and your formalities. I didn’t mind if you were engaged. It’s what you would have done. And I promise I will chase and kill that woman, because her right to live it’s been already taken away from her.”

“I know how someone like you, someone scarred by war events and blood, would not simply succumb to this. If there’s something more you wanted to tell to the night, now do it, despite I no longer can hear you.”

“I’m crumbling, John. Help me to get over this. Help me to live. Please?”

Sherlock closed his eyes, remembering how the last time he had pleaded John to do something for him had been for the same reason he was now clinging onto him for dear life. However, John was currently a lifeless mass of bones and flesh and this was different.

“And… John, there’s something more I must tell you. I can’t cry now. The last time I talked to you I was able to expose my emotions, and now I seem I can’t find them. Why can’t I cry, John? Why can’t I mourn you?”

_“What is wrong with me?”_

Sherlock pressed his cheek against John’s right one, before taking a deep breath. His body convulsed a little. No tears came out.

Then, Sherlock had an idea.

He placed John onto the floor, carefully, and left the bathroom not without managing to look one more time at his friend, lying on the cold ground. He ran to the kitchen and started to pull all his belongings out of the boxes, placing each one of them to their appropriate spot. The skull above the piece of furniture in the living room, his violin case settled cautiously next to the window, the microscope on the kitchen table, following by his chemical contraptions such as petri dishes, test tubes, and everything a normal Sherlock would need in a normal day. He removed the rotten fish from the sink and threw it to the trash bag. Some of his clothes were also packed, and Sherlock carried them into his old bedroom. Something made him stay still in the doorframe. It smelled like John.

After placing each of his clothes immaculately inside each drawer, he returned to the kitchen and opened the fridge. Most food was still in good condition, but Sherlock decided it could be better.

He left the flat and went out of 221B to dig inside garbage bags. He found some rotten trotters inside one of them and decided it would be sufficient. Once back in the kitchen, he put the quartered flesh into the fridge. He then closed it.

Sherlock hided the carton boxes far away of his sight. He returned to the bathroom and emptied the water in the bathtub. The most complicated part was to lift John in his arms, although It wasn’t as difficult as he once had believed to carry John away from that _crime scene,_ until he was safely sat on the couch he loved so much. Sherlock looked at him with disbelief. John could have been staring at him as if nothing had happened.

Now _everything_ was exactly how he had left it.

Except for one thing.

Sherlock took the flower bouquet left on the bathroom floor and carefully kept it under his coat.

The detective sat on his own black couch, his fingertips touching in a thoroughly expression. He avoided making eye contact with John.

 

Minutes of silence passed, but Sherlock couldn’t oblige to look at John for one second. He spoke.

“Merry Christmas, John.”

No reply came.

Sherlock cleared his throat.

“I got a present for you. You once said none had given you flowers even since your mission in Afghanistan.” He pulled out the flower bouquet and showed it to John. “These are for you.”

No reply came.

Sherlock almost grunted. He was getting tired of this game, and for god’s sake, not even in the morgue had he talked to a corpse.

Beaten, Sherlock returned to the bathroom and placed the flowers onto the cold ground again.

At least, this is what people do. Leave flowers to their lost ones.

When Sherlock returned to the living room, a muffled voice rustled his ears.

“Merry Christmas, Sherlock.”

Sherlock’s heart skipped a beat. His eyes watered; then collapsed.

Far away, outside the window, soft voices singing could be heard:

_Silent night, Holy night,_  
_All is calm, All is bright_  
_Round yon virgin mother and child._  
_Holy infant so tender and mild,_  
_Sleep in heavenly peace._  
_Sleep in heavenly peace._


End file.
